Dear owners of the folded hands
Who sit in quiet all the day,
Grieve not that with the falling sands
Your knitting has been laid away.

Those hands are stilled to free your hearts,
That they a finer work may do:
For God His richest gifts imparts
To special pleaders such as you.

So lift those hearts to Him above
In streams of yearning, strong desire.
For all the scattered ones you love,
That they may feel His quickening fire.

None else can know, as you, their needs-
What this one lacks-why that one fails;
True knowledge with true insight pleads,
And wrestling inwardly, prevails.

So heavenly light shall through you glow
And healing fly to distant lands,
While angels, looking down below,
May envy you your folded hands.

Sarah Hopkins